I am guessing this is not targeting those of us on the heavily subsidized $200/mo plans. Sure, these plans may be temporary, but none of us really know how temporary they are. Until then, 1/3rd of the published API pricing is not very appealing.
I have in mind 50k-100k ish for 3d studio max or was it softimage? (Well seems softimage https://www.awn.com/animationworld/siggraph-news-announcing-... ).
So... Basically we are back to this era.
The value was the multiple CDs of MSDN documentation and code samples which where very handy considering the slim pickings on the internet in 1995.
These weren't included with an IDE perpetual license retail box.
The other weird thing about the subs is that if the agents aren't grinding if feels like I'm losing money.
Dude that topped Meta's tokenmaxxxing board before it was shut down used 265 billion tokens in a month. I kid you not.
And it was damn cheap too! The main page cost was like 5 dollar.
I can not imagine some shelling out $200/month and then using that product lightly.
The people paying for the plan are not the same people using it.
Of 6 people I have data on the $200/plan only 2 regularly use more than $400 value.
> I'll bet the other way: the plan is not cost effective unless you are coding
The person I've personally seen use the most tokens isn't a coder. They do the "second brain" thing and wow it uses a lot of tokens.
They believe in the value, and TBH I've seen them do some pretty interesting and impressive things with it.
> the most junior developer, so green they almost need mowing, are going to throw the agents into a loop
I think this is also true.
But loops actually hit the cache a lot and most people who are calculating the value they are getting from a subscription aren't taking this into account.
SemiAnalysis published a snippet of their analysis, and they believe their tokens are an effective price of $0.99/million, rather than $20/million the naive pricing calculation would give you.
Then yeah, I would say you're right that plan users don't, probably for the best.
It's not a 98% margin loss if your users are unwilling to pay 50 times the cost that they were previously paying, and if they have other options like open source providers. The calculus isn't so simple because some portion of users would switch to API, and so it's about how many would continue using the service rather than leaving for a competitor.
I'm aware they need to recoup the enormous cost of training and data centers, but on a purely inference cost level I'm not convinced that the 200 dollar plans are unprofitable.
Are your thought patterns worth 9800 dollars a month?
What's the RoR on analyzing those thought patterns?
Especially considering not everyone is tokenmaxxing, and in most parts of the world people take leave and companies do not cut their subscriptions.
I suspect they are priced to have a lifetime average price/token amount that is roughly break-even, or maybe a slight loss leader.
> have seen Dario say in multiple interviews that they are profitable on inference, which maybe he was only meaning to refer to API usage, but that's not the impression I got.
I think he does mean API usage. Don't forget they can (and do) adjust the number of tokens you get on each plan at any time to adjust their margins on those.
That means he knows that is controllable, and it only the underlaying inference that defines the succes or otherwise of the company.
Exactly. I have the Claude $100/mo plan, and use it moderately for open source hobby stuff. I still haven't dipped my toes into the Fable pool, but I always use Opus 4.8 on xhigh, and I never hit my limits.
On the other hand, though, there have been times when I've looked at /usage for a long-running session (e.g., 7-10 days, after it's compacted a few times), and it showed I'd used ~$450 worth of tokens just for that session. So I'm clearly getting value for the money here when it comes to the subscription cost. But I still don't hit limits, so...
Anthropic emailed me today:
Fable 5 moved to usage credits on July 20. It is still available to you, but it requires pay-as-you-go usage credits and is not included in your subscription rate limits.For Premium seats it is.
https://support.claude.com/en/articles/15424964-claude-fable...
The half usage limit still applies.